First Recorded Experiment

Filed by Jimmy — circa rural Indiana. PHASE 0, TEASER 2.

Every operation has an origin. Mine involves a Hot Wheels trike, a red wagon, and a street built on a downgrade.

The trike could slide. Anyone who had one knew that if you pedaled hard and then cranked the handlebars, the back end would swing around like you’re Bo Duke escaping Rosco. After hundreds of slides, I had the maneuver down to a science.

The wagon, I reasoned, was just a bigger trike. The front wheels were somewhat steerable and roughly the same height as the trike’s. In the absence of pedals, the hill would provide the necessary speed.

With supreme confidence, I positioned the wagon at the top of the hill and then climbed aboard. I grinned as the optimal speed was reached for the maneuver. Then I cranked the handle. Quite unexpectedly, the wagon, now bound by a different law of physics, embraced the pavement, and I experienced temporary weightlessness before the forces of gravity took over again.

What I discovered that day was the coefficient of sliding friction—specifically, that rubber wagon wheels do not have a coefficient low enough to steer/drift in any direction, whereas the trike’s plastic wheels drifted because of their low coefficient.

Lesson logged: Knowing a thing works is not the same as knowing why it works. I have been chasing the why ever since.

More field reports declassified soon. —Jimmy